Update: I'm starting to see a few more shrimplets on the walls now. Not as many as I had before the insert, but their numbers are starting to increase.
Update: I'm starting to see a few more shrimplets on the walls now. Not as many as I had before the insert, but their numbers are starting to increase.
This topic is very interesting to me. I have several different types of algae in my many tanks. For me, the most problematic is the thins whispy green hair algae and the thicker, more individual green strand/hair algae. In my situation it seems that I always have a bloom of green hair algae during the first 6 months of a tank and then when the shrimp colony blooms, the algae gradually decreases until it is gone entirely.
I will follow this thread for any further knowlege on algae types...palatibility...nutritional value etc...
Thank you for this interesting thread.
Algae has finally grown back enough to cover a lot of the glass. To my surprise, it is regular green algae that is now present. Not Green Spot like when the resin was in or diatoms like I had in the first place. I only do water changes of about 15% once a week, so I think it will take a while for the water in the whole tank to have the same composition as it did before the resin. I have a feeling that in a few more weeks I'll eventually get diatoms again, once the tank water is pretty much all fresh from my tap with none left that had been exposed to the resin, and that this green algae is kind've a transition phase. The spots of black brush algae, which I could not manage to get off the filter pump before, now comes off easily, and no new spots are growing to take the place of what black brush algae I've removed.
I've got a decent amount of very small shrimplets now. They, along with shrimp of all ages, are happily eating the green algae off of the glass. You can see clean little trails and spots where they've eaten the green algae off. They seem to definitely like it better than the green spot algae, but not as much as the diatoms.
Very interesting topic. Please do keep us posted. I have an 8 gal also but its very new (6 weeks) and the walls of the tank are getting brown and I can't decide if it's from the driftwood tannins still leaching out or if its an algae of some sort. I'm keeping a close eye on it.
Hmm, I've had tanks with lots of tannins in them, and the walls don't look brown, the water does. If the actual walls are looking brown than it will be algae.
Well, I'll take that as a good thing since the tank is new; just don't want it to get out of control. I have a C02 diffuser but haven't started it due to only java moss and ricci moss in tank. If I start using the C02 will that keep the algae under control?
Very interesting topic indeed.
I too noticed that tiny shrimplets are seen on the glass when brown diatoms grow and less so for the green.
Brown diatom is also favored by Ottos and other algae grazers likely because it is a relatively easy algae to remove from the glass rather than having better nutritional values.
If I had a choice, I would rather have brown diatom than any other algae, esp black beard and staghorn!
One thing I would like to comment on. Akeath's silica removing filter media also took out phosphate from the water column. The low phosphate is known to be a factor enhancing the growth of green spot algae. Green spot algae is somehow immuned to the lack of phosphate and use the opportunity to grow when other plants and algae are hit by phosphate deficiencies. When phosphate was restored, the more edible "normal" green dust algae took over.
Some may see this as an advantage, in that one can kill off other algae by restricting phosphate and letting green spot take over (at least they can be scrapped off).
Others, like Akeath, prefers to cultivate "edible" algae so green spots are not welcomed.
Again, I would rather have green spot, green dust and brown diatom any day in place of BBA and staghorn!
Sorry its been so long since I updated. I noticed something about the shrimplets and adult algae ratio again a few weeks ago. I had newer algae growing in a big chunk, and it was totally layered with shrimplets, whereas the older algae had mostly adults and subadults on it. Both the new and old growth were regular green algae. I thought that perhaps the newer algae was either easier to eat or more tasty for the shrimplets, and so scraped off a lot of the algae to experiment with that a bit more. But it took a lot longer than I thought it would to grow back, I guess now that the tank has lots of plants it will take a lot longer for the algae to grow, since it has to compete. Anyway, it started growing back mostly green, and I found I did indeed have a lot of extremely small shrimplets - 1 mm or so - on new growth as compared to old. As I understand it, the very young shrimp don't eat commercial food as much and rely more on the micro-organisms on the plants and the algae on the glass for food, so I think in the future I will try to keep up with regular scraping so there is room for more of that new growth that the shrimplets flock to. Also, I'm finally getting diatoms back again. Between 1/4-1/3 of the algae on the walls is now diatoms, with the remainder being green algae. I'm going to keep an eye on things as it continues to transition and see if I can find out if the adults and subadults prefer the diatoms or the green algae. I already know the shrimplets prefer the diatoms. It will probably take a while before I can determine that, as the diatoms and green algae are interspersed right now. I'll see if they grow in more obvious patches later, so I can tell which one the adults are gravitating towards more easily.
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